- Meeple Perk
- Oct 16, 2020
- 4 min read
Oh hey hello there! Sorry, you just startled me, I didn’t see you approach. Well… My name is Drew and I’m the other half of Meeple Perk. I plan occasionally coming on to the blog to talk about well… Games! Because well, Rhi is the Coffee Addict, and I’m the Game Addict… So makes sense that’s what I’ll talk about. So? What game shall I talk about first?
How about the Roll & Write game of Super-Skill Pinball 4cade? Or at least, the completely free print and play version, that along with a couple of dice, some tokens, and 1-4 players is a great game. Personally, for the purpose of this review, I played it solo as at the moment, playing with others is a little difficult, so I’ve been looking for more games to play solo.
WHAT IS SUPER-SKILL PINBALL 4CADE? It’s a Roll & Write game as I previously mentioned. Basically means you use dice, in this case, 2 6-sided dice, rolled each turn and the player/s will have to determine which dice to use to cross something off. As it’s pinball, the objective is to score the most points. Which at a basic gaming level pleases me, it’s rolling dice and scoring points. Who doesn’t love that? The print and play version includes 1 of the 4 tables that will be included in the full release of the game, presented in such a way that it’s fairly printer-friendly. I would suggest laminating it if you can, I got one printed and laminated and it makes playing the game much easier, but isn’t really needed unless you want to play it a bunch and keep costs down.
HOW DOES IT PLAY?
The Pinball table is split into four sections. After the dice are rolled, your ball has to move down one section, and then you use one of the two dice to determine where you go in that section. You can drop more sections if you like.
In the first section, you have the START ZONE that leads into the FERRIS WHEEL ZONE. In this zone, you cross off the three different boxes by using the correct results and earn yourself a SKILL SHOT, which you pick a number, and then whenever you need to, switch out the dice result with the SKILL SHOT number.
In the second section, you have the BUMPER ZONE. Bouncing on a bumper allows you to score one point, and you can clear the boxes when all 12 are filled in. You also can avoiding moving around and bounce on multiple bumpers if you can follow the purple arrow round (for example the 1/2 bumper to the 3/4 bumper) keeping the ball up longer and scoring more points. It also contains the FEAT OF STRENGTH, which you can only hit from the flippers, in order, to score the shown points for hitting that high up the target, and clearing once you've filled each box.
The third section contains the TARGET ZONE. Hit the targets, complete the colour set (three on the yellow side, four on the yellow), and gain a bonus. Bonuses are pretty self-explanatory and I'll let you discover them for yourself. Except. MULTIBALL has to get a special mention... soon.
Lastly, in the fourth section, we have the FLIPPER ZONE. The flippers allow the ball to go back to the top of the table, a limited amount of times. Notice, however, that there are two different colour flippers? And how most of the zones feature red and yellow? Yeah... in a really nice touch, the red flipper can only hit Red Targets, THE BUMPERS, THE FEAT OF STRENGTH, and the red targets in the TARGET ZONE. Yellow can hit THE FERRIS WHEEL ZONE, THE BUMPERS, and the yellow targets in the TARGET ZONES.
Continue playing for three balls, keep track of points as you go, whoever scores the most points wins. If you play solo, just play to beat your high score.
Pretty simple and lovely, takes about 20-30 minutes and is just a well-designed game that just works. Not convinced, then let me talk about the most genius part of the game. MULTIBALL. When you activate MULTIBALL which you can do twice per game (one from each side of the targets) you add a second ball to the table. Each turn each ball must move down a zone, and now, each dice result must be used, one by each of the balls. Roll a 2 and a 6? You have to use the 2 with one ball, and 6 with the other. You also score double points on anything while you have multiball. This leaves you with a lot of tough choices on your way to beat your high score... Can you set up the FEAT OF STRENGTH so you can score 40 points for fulfilling it? Or can you go round a few times in the BUMPER ZONE?
WHAT DOES DREW THINK THEN, OVERALL? All in all, this is a game I am having a ton of fun with. It's a very simple, well designed, enjoyable game that I've been a little addicted to, trying to beat my high score. It's a great game to play solo and as a great introduction to Roll & Write games in general with the simple premise.
The other thing though that I have to mention is that at the time of writing this blog, it shouldn't be that long until the full release version of this game is out as well! It will have 3 more pinball tables as mentioned, each with a different theme and style of play, improved artwork, and I am for sure going to be picking it up for more pinball fun. I am a sucker for Roll & Writes, but this one is quickly becoming a favourite of mine.
You can check out the designer, Geoffrey Engelstein explaining the rules in a little bit more detail here and grab a copy of the print & play here.
Anyway! I hope you've enjoyed this! I'm not sure how often I will be writing these but I look forward to doing them as and when I have games to properly discuss.
Board Game Addict
Drew!
